The Steel Trap is a crime\/suspense thriller starring Joseph Cotton as Jim Osborne an assistant bank manager in Los Angeles who is tempted to steal a million dollars from his bank.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n Jim has become bored with the slow plodding progress in the career of a bank manager and realizes that his bank has close to a million dollars of cash in its vault every Friday at closing which will not be missed until Monday at about 8:30 am.<\/p>\n He quickly and uncarefully concocts a plan to steal the cash and fly to Brazil with his family before the theft is discovered.\u00a0 From the very beginning holes in his plan appear.\u00a0 The upcoming weekend is the last time the bank won\u2019t be open on Saturday until next year so the theft has to be tomorrow.\u00a0 This means getting passports for himself and his wife will have to be expedited.\u00a0 His wife Laurie balks at bringing their young daughter so a babysitter has to be located for the \u201ctwo weeks\u201d that Jim tells Laurie he\u2019ll need to be in Brazil on the bank\u2019s business.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t know that plane flight reservations to Rio De Janeiro are booked weeks in advance and now he\u2019ll have to chance getting cancellation seats.\u00a0 And he\u2019ll have to fly first to New Orleans and then connect to his flight.<\/p>\n And all the things that can go wrong do.\u00a0 His wife isn\u2019t in time to get the passports while the Brazilian embassy is open so Jim has to break in after hours and is caught by a building security guard and only some luck with an embassy worker who vouches for him saves him from arrest.\u00a0 The one-hundred-and-fifty-pound suitcase full of cash catches the airline\u2019s attention and they have a customs agent open it and find the cash.\u00a0 Jim has to tell a bunch of unlikely stories about how the bank needs cash to transact a business deal in Brazil and barely survives the calls to his boss when it turns out he\u2019s on the golf course.\u00a0 But eventually all of this is for nothing when the cancellations on his flight never materialize.\u00a0 Now Jim is faced with catching a flight on Monday after the bank has discovered the theft.<\/p>\n At this point Laurie has put two and two together and figures out that Jim has stolen the cash in the suitcase and confronts him.\u00a0 When he admits to it, she refuses to continue with the plan and goes home to her daughter.\u00a0 Meanwhile back at home Jim\u2019s work friend dropped off a present at Jim\u2019s home and hears about Jim making an unscheduled \u201cbusiness trip\u201d to Brazil.\u00a0 Finding this strange he tries to get in touch with Jim\u2019s boss to get the details on the trip but has trouble reaching him.\u00a0 Meanwhile Laurie reaches home and finds out about Jim\u2019s friend hearing about their trip so she calls him and makes some excuse about how it wasn\u2019t a business trip but a story they used to disguise a surprise for their daughter.<\/p>\n Early Monday morning Jim calls up Laurie at home and tells her he realizes he\u2019s made a terrible mistake and says he\u2019s going to try to get the money back in the vault before anyone knows it\u2019s missing.\u00a0 He flies home and reaches the bank right after the security guard has opened it.\u00a0 He manages to get the suitcase to the vault and the money back in and hide the suitcase just as the opening team reaches his position outside the vault.\u00a0 At this point the actual strain of the deception overcomes Jim and he sinks to the floor.\u00a0 His colleagues think he\u2019s been struck with a flu and tell him to go home.\u00a0 In the last scene Jim reunites with Laurie at their home in an embrace that shows their relief at the end of the nightmare.<\/p>\n Now this must sound like a ridiculous story.\u00a0 And it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s absurd.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also enormously suspenseful.\u00a0 Jim Osborne has done such a poor job of anticipating the multitude of things that need to be coordinated for a successful theft of this type that he\u2019s left himself open for an almost endless series of problems that provide suspense.\u00a0 His bad humor and fear grow from minute to minute and alarm his wife because they clash with his normally friendly and calm attitude.\u00a0 The tension is ratcheted up throughout the movie.\u00a0 I was surprised just how much I enjoyed it.\u00a0 Highly recommended.<\/p>\n